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Show I HINTS FOR A HA??Y HOME Returning to Prayer with dreadful hours. We push them into the background, but they come back again. Sometimes they come in the dark wakeful stretches of the night, sometimes while oee is sitting wearily in f.n odorous lunchroom, lunch-room, sometimes in a market when a sweet, weary woman with an anxious face, eyes the meats and the bread and fingers a few folded bills. In those hours a sort of terror may take hold of one. What's it By KATHLEEN NORMS NEW YEAR'S EVE seems a good time to talk again about Betty McCoy. Betty McCoy's trouble was that she couldn't find God; she just didn't believe. It all seemed pretty enough to her the churches and the prayers pray-ers but not convincing. Not in years have I had as many letters in ans.ver to any article as I had to that one. Hundreds of women wom-en and a few men, several clergymen clergy-men and priests and .lecturers, from places in my own town and from Canada and Australia, wrote me their own experiences in this most .delicate and personal of all adventures. And some 20 persons, including a college dean and two college instructors, in-structors, assured me scornfully that there is no God. The contrast between the believers' eager, helpful help-ful letters and the discontent of the teachers was marked. The latter not only didn't believe but they resented anyone's believing In the mass of these letters more than a few were directed to the Betty McCoy who had written me "from Salt Lake City." One fine woman wanted to meet Betty, to befriend her, to try to interest her in church and church work. The difficulty of this situation was that the name of the writer of the original orig-inal letter was not Betty McCoy, nor was her town Salt Lake City. Spiritual Hunger In all my 20 years of writing these little talks, I never have used a real name nor described a situation so closely that anyone could be embarrassed by being recognized. It is the human value of the story that I try to preserve, very often by exact quotations from actual letters. Well, anyway, I sent a dozen letters let-ters on to the real Betty and she may have answered some of them by this time. Her great hunger was for something more than just the everyday material of life the waking wak-ing and sleeping, eating and working, work-ing, washing dishes and washing clothes. Isn't there something, Betty demanded, de-manded, that lifts life out of the commonplace, puts light behind the drab realities that all of us have to face? Yes, all of us. Rich and poor, young and old, life presents us all Where is the meaning? all about? Why isn't life easier? Why is even childhood checkered with humiliations and disappointments disappoint-ments and despairs? Why is the short sweet deceptive time of youth and love and mating so blind and so brief, so soon encroached upon by disillusionment and tedium? Courage for Middle-Age As for middle-age it takes supernatural super-natural courage to get through It. Fatigues, failures, gray hair, baldness, bald-ness, headaches, losses, dental replacements, re-placements, hearing aids, indigestion, indiges-tion, corns isn't it a frightful summary sum-mary of ills! To some persons, that is. To others it is the pleasantest time yet. A week ago the astounding Baby was born In our hearts again. New Year's is a good time to determine to keep Him there. New Year's is a time to slip into some dark church and get started toward that comfortable philosophy that will convince us that life is a privilege, that the old world is a good place ii which to be and that familiar delights are in reach of us all a walk in country lanes or city streets, an appetizing dinner, plans for the next holiday and the car, music, a good book, a turned down smooth bed, work end friendly contacts. |